


And The Stars Will Be Your Eyes

by ClementineStarling



Category: True Detective
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 12:30:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1550519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClementineStarling/pseuds/ClementineStarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Retelling of *that* scene between Rust and Maggie in 1x06, "Haunted Houses", because I was superdissatisfied with the way things went down between them.</p><p>  <span class="small">    <b>Content Warnings</b>  </span><br/><span class="small">Ratingwise between a M and an Explicit, I'd say. Rated upwards, just to be safe. So don't expect this fic to be too graphic. Obviously I'm stuck in synaesthetic flowerland these days, but be aware, apart from the sex scene, there are mentions of death and descriptions of corpses.</span></p>
            </blockquote>





	And The Stars Will Be Your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** The original scene involves a lot of dub/non-con-motifs, whereas this interpretation draws a more romantisised picture. If you're bothered by that, please don't read. Thanks. :)  
>  __
> 
> I felt the neccessity to write this from the moment I saw „Haunted Houses“, because yeah, there has already been earlier tension between Rust and Maggie but I never thought there would be a chance they’d to that, I mean, come on. And then, I was also kind of unenthusiastic about the format; if you destroy a marriage by one single fuck it should better be worth it. Meaning they should have had way more sex than what we got, so basically I only imagined some kind of original cut of the scene. It turned out a lot less graphic than I intended it to be... Still it took me ages to complete it, mainly because I wanted to explore Rust's falling apart in 2002, after 7 years of managing his condition just fine. There were so many pieces to the puzzle, I found myself browsing Reddit and several online-magazines for interpretations and explanations, to bridge logic-gaps, rewatching the series several times, even reading sth. of the Carcosa-stuff until thankfully my obsession began to fade a little. This is a poor result for all the time I invested (I even considered writing an alternative ending), but yeah, it's got to come out of my drawer, so I can concentrate on sth else.
> 
> Also I want to add, that while I enjoy certain aspects of Nic Pizzolatto’s writing very much, there are things that are problematic, especially gender roles, which I kind of reproduce in my fic. So this is a warning and also an attempt to distance myself from the writing.
> 
> Acknowledgements: Apart from ransacking Pizzolatto's intellectual property, I took the title of this fic from a line of "Far From Any Road" by The Handsome Family; I used a picture of Ray Bradbury, of women nesting in time, that's from "Something Wicked This Way Comes", and several quotes of "Cassilda's Song" from Richard Chambers' "The King in Yellow".  
> Thanks to [Jaqueline](http://archiveofourown.org/users/jaqueline_nutweasel/pseuds/jaqueline_nutweasel) for the encouragement. ❤️
> 
> Comments are, as always, very much appreciated. As is spelling & grammar-advice. (English is not my native language)

** And The Wind Will Be My Hands **

The days weigh upon him like lead and thunderstorms, suffocating in their closeness. There are moments when he can barely breathe in this thicket of lies, everywhere he looks corruption is sprawling out over the country. A religious leader, a dead methhead, his own boss, somehow they're all connected, all guilty behind their masks of righteousness or indifference, every single one of them. His ledger is heavy with their sins; neatly he's written them down, recorded them for the day of reckoning. He won’t let them get away with it, and if it’s the last thing he does. But he’s not there yet, not by a long shot, and his time here is running out.

Rustin Cohle shakes another cigarette from his pack and lights it. He takes a deep pull and then watches how the smoke curls and twists from his lungs like a special effect on a stage set. He takes up the flashlight from the table and switches it on, the beam like his gaze as it tries to penetrate the fume. The walls of the room are plastered with the faces of women and children. It feels like going back to the beginning.

 _You are in Carcosa now, with me_ , Reggie Ledoux says in his head.

Shadows flicker over the make-shift whiteboard like an old movie, attempting to stir the pictures into stories. And for a moment it appears as if they were to succeed: mysteries spell-bound by the flash lamp shiver and freeze like deer in headlights, a nearly decipherable twist of leads and clues. Rust can sense the thread that would unravel the knot, just there on the edge of his mind, like a word on the tip of your tongue, but every time he reaches for it, it keeps slipping away.

He sways, clutching at the torch like a life line, the vodka sharp on his tongue. Its lull is the only indulgence he still permits himself, last of his chemical comforts. It wraps him up like a warm blanket, hiding him from the freezing cold that's the world through a pessimist’s eye. Apart from that the booze does all but help. It not only fails to open his eyes to the subliminal, but also renders his usually razor-sharp mind dull and blunt like an old blade; so instead of dissecting the rotten narrative, peeling away the lies and deceit, he’s poking about in the near dark, blindly, desperate for an answer…

But there is none to be found. The deaths remain meaningless, unspeakable, like the end of life typically is, the incursion of the Real that does not bow to the symbolic order, that stubbornly will refuse to make sense.

The eyes stare at him from the walls and he stares right back, unblinking, until their features blur and fade and everything that’s left is her face: Sofia.

When recently the nightmares have crept back into his life, she's been tagging along. It’s been 13 years that she died and still he holds her every night, as light and limp as a doll in his arms, her essence vanished like mist on a sunny morning, slipped away into the dark, without trace, without appeal. His beautiful little girl…

In sober moments, when he is lying on his mattress, staring at the bare walls, waiting for the utter bleakness of the room to uncloud his mind, Rust wonders why of all religious concepts it is the idea of redemption that has come to haunt him. As if the truth could undo what happened to his daughter.

For years he has done penance. He’s been to hell, gone through a purgatory of cartels and fear and withdrawal. The mere memories used to be enough to put the flutter of panic back in his stomach. Even now, nearly a decade later, they still evoke the stale taste of metal in his mouth and the smell of gun oil on his fingers. He remembers sleepless nights, haunted by the past, that seemed to drag on and on, till finally, in 95, after they had closed the Dora Lang case, the nightmares slowly begun to fade, the pain lost its edge until it was hardly more than a dull throbbing in the back of his mind.

But now, in the small hours, in the lonesome dark of his bed, Sofia has started to whisper again, endearments like she used to, before she became but an illusion in his head, and when finally sleep overwhelms him, he sees her, over and over, grown up, grown old, in every victim he’s ever set eyes on, but most vividly in the girl with the antlers, strapped to a tree as if entwined with nature. Nature perverted by the creatures that escaped her laws.

They had declared Dori Lange the victim of two madmen who dabbled in drugs and crime and occultism. A sacrifice in a satanic ritual which - by the discovery of the two children - became more of a horror story than a criminal case; a deed so far removed from society, so terrible and strange, it appeared almost unreal. A singularity. It was a convenient story, too, shifting all the blame towards the fringes, to the outsiders. Just like now, when they close their eyes to the fact people go missing, people from the margins of society that is, and the fact that every lead, everything he uncovers points right towards the middle of their community, towards Billy Lee Tuttle and his church. His suspension is the latest proof that he’s right about something, that the roots for these crimes reach deep into the core of their society.

Rust lights himself another cigarette. Ironic really to blame it on the devil, he thinks, when it had been Christianity itself that turned women into prey in the first place, blamed them for sin and for evil. Temptation is what they call it, the excuse to scar, to rape, to kill.

He too feels its lure, the wiles of darkness simmering in his guts. He’s not so different from the animals. It is slumbering within him as it is in every male of their species. They’re made to destroy. Each in their own way. 

He thinks of Marty’s irresponsibility, his own aloofness. He remembers Laurie, the brightness of tears in her eyes, the desperation in her fists as they were pounding against his chest and then finally, resignation… He had faded from her life long before they split, evading the insistence on emotional closeness by plunging into work. A coward’s escape.

She is better off without him and he… Well, the truth is that he chose to be a monk a long time ago. 

It’s not too hard a decision when you cannot touch skin without imagining the blossoms of lividity under the tips of your fingers, the waxen feel of a corpse so prominent on your mind, it makes you retch. Once you’ve seen the flesh ripped open and bones prised apart and gazed into the hollow emptiness that remains of a human being, the picture stays with you, burnt into your retina. But perhaps the worst is the irreconcilability, the futility of life: there is no soul to be found in the broken vessel, no hidden meaning to be read from spilled viscera. There is no closure. Not for those who are left behind.

Yet here he kneels, before an altar of evidence, warrior turned scribe, waiting for a revelation. Mockingly the shadows dance and slip away.

_I closed my eyes and saw the king in yellow moving through the forest..._

 

A knock at the door jerks him from his haze.  
It’s Maggie.

At first he is not sure if he is imagining her, because he is wasted and she never comes to his place. And why should she, she is Marty’s wife, and yes, they’ve been friendly but… Something is wrong, she is crying and even though he’s blind drunk he assumes the reason before she can even tell him. It’s hardly a surprise she’d figure out one day that Marty is cheating on her again.

„What?“ he says nevertheless, irritated. He has no patience for her problems - it’s their marriage, their trust issues, their jealousy and he hates to be dragged into their quarrels. 

He has known Marty for seven years now and most of this time his partner has behaved like a little boy. Which is charming sure, but not when it comes to being a father and a husband. He’s not a bad guy, that’s not it, maybe unrestrained. Low impulse control. Where Rust treats his body like a tool and sees to its needs with the practicality of a mechanic, Marty is inclined to give in to every urge, pursue every whim and chase every pleasure, regardless of justifications or qualms – in that regard he’s developed a certain moral flexibility if you will. He’s got this whole theory of needing „decompression“ after the job, release before returning to his family. Basically it’s about doing what he feels like without considering the consequences. Which of course, he regards as his privilege alone.

Maggie should know by now. She’s had more than enough time to work out what makes Marty tick. But like most people she cannot look at the obvious, its dreariness makes her shy away and return to the safety of her narrative, reshape the world to fit her story. There are times when he is envious of this gift. Though not today when he can see the pain in her eyes and the desperation for an answer and if he understands anything then this, the need for an explanation.

His booze-muddled brain registers the bottle of wine she carries and in the back of his head, an alarm goes off, but before he can react she has squeezed herself past him, so close the scent of her perfume glues itself to his nasal mucosa. 

He follows her, slowly, warily, unable not to notice her impossibly high heels, the flow of the dress around her legs, her darn smell in his nose, like freshly mown grass and morning dew and underneath… Oh God, he cannot think about that.

„Did you know about it?“ It couldn’t be worse if she yelled at him. 

„No.“ He says, voice as flat as the lie. What else can he say?

He sees her cracking up and he feels sorry, so sorry, but he cannot tell her and Christ, she brought wine and he can’t have her in his house. Not when he’s this hammered, not when he’s this drawn to her. He turns away, towards the counter, to pour himself another glass, despite all better judgment, its coolness soothing in his hand.

The pull is so familiar he’s even got used to it over the years: He’s felt it from the very first time he sat at her table. Marty thinks he understands what he has, thinks he values her, but he knows shit. Maggie’s a woman, not some girl he likes to fuck, she is the mother of his children, she’s home and she’s sanity. Rust had spent years imagining how his life with Claire might have turned out if Sofia had lived, how it would have been to have a family. And then, on Sofia’s ninth birthday he saw domestic bliss and although he knew he could never have that, that it’s not for him, it jerked something awake that had lain dormant, and for a few precious minutes he sat there, at Maggie’s table, ate her food and talked to her, pretending she were his wife not Marty’s.

The longing for this, it comes back every time he sees her, and she looks at him like she understood his sadness, like she cared. Maybe that’s why he let her set him up with Laurie, maybe this is what Laurie meant to him. He does not know. All he knows is that in Maggie it comes true what he once read about women. They nest in time. They make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. There is something infinitely calming about that, turning time into comfort.

Even now as her heart breaks, she seems to be more considered about him than about herself, and for the moment he wants to believe it.

„You can’t live like this“, he hears her saying and suddenly she is so close and her smell is like the warmth of the sun after a long winter and Rust is thankful for the alcohol that dulls his senses, because he’s walking a tightrope here and without the booze every stimulus would spawn a hundred more in his brain. Even though his body is barely here anymore but half-way into dreamland, the arousal is shrill like fishhooks in his flesh and it takes every ounce of self control to resist the unspoken offer, to withstand the impulse to reach for her…  

His skull strains against the skin which stretches tight over sharp bones, tense like his whole body. „People that give me advice, I reckon they’re talking to themselves.“ There still is austerity in his pose, rigour in the set of his jaw. He’s trying to hold on to his stoicism but for how long?

„What are you doing?“, he asks. It’s more of a warning than an actual question, some weak boundary he draws though he knows it won’t hold.

She answers in riddles. „Some people no matter where they look they see themselves.“

He tries not to look at her, but she won’t let him. Her palm against his cheek, so soft and so unreal at the same time. The clutch of her fingers on his shoulder, on his neck, then lips against sinew. Sensations race over his skin like colours .

„Be honest with me now“, she whispers. He cannot. He must not. The truth is he always wanted her, wanted her like a good hit, like the warmth a drink settles in your stomach, but she never was his to take and he respected that.

His whole body struggles against the overwhelming urge, he makes himself stiff as a board, leaning away but her hands, they hold him, they pull him close… and he feels his resistance seeping away. Now that she is here, around him like a meadow at midnight, flowers in the sky and stars in wet grass, all the repressed desires swim back to the surface like float wood, the need in every fibre of his being and before he knows it he kisses her back.

She tastes sweet like a lullaby, even better than he imagined, her curves moulding themselves to his body. For a moment it feels like drowning, gasping for air and finding only pleasure. Self restraint flakes off him like old paint. His hand finds the way into her hair, holding on, as if he could not be sure whether she’s real, but then it feels like her can sense her heartbeat pulsing through his veins.

His mouth is greedy upon hers, his tongue bold. There is no hesitation anymore, no reserve. The sound of her whimpers ignites sparks in his guts and his fingers are suddenly feverish on her body, that’s so warm and so alive under his hands. He wants to delve into that life, lose himself in it, taste her with his eyes, smell her with his hands.

She moans into his mouth, her fingers as impatient as his, fumbling with the buckle of his belt while he is tugging at her dress, clutching at the curve of her arse. He kisses her neck, running his teeth over the sensitive skin and he feels her shiver. 

However long it has been, the body does not forget, it knows what it wants.

Rust drops to his knees, his hands gliding upwards of their own accord, following the length of Maggie’s legs. He pulls at her thong and shoves her dress upwards and then his mouth settles between her thighs, curious lips on soft folds.

Her scent is like the dazzling roll of a high that makes the blood thunder in his ears. His tongue dips into her wetness, trails through it in long purposeful strokes. He sucks and nips and teases, evoking a cascade of sighs, the sweetest of sounds. They tug at his insides, so much more cruel than the gentle touch of his mouth, dig like claws into his guts. The abstinence is taking its toll: the desire burns in his skin like cold turkey, impatience keen as nails on a blackboard.

He barely hears her voice through the haze.

Please. She moans. Rust.

Her hands tear at the roots of his hair.

Fuck me. 

The words tangle in his belly and drag him to his feet, following the lead of her hands. Her fingers sneak under the hem of his shirt, their brush against his stomach makes the muscles contract under the taut skin. She looks at him, hazel eyes nearly black, like space stretching into the void, like black stars, while her hands slip under the waistband of his pants and shove them down over his hips. Then the oily smell of rubber, slick on his fingers as he rolls it over his cock, and the sharp spike of pleasure at the touch. So good, but not nearly as good as she will feel.

When he lifts her from the ground, she is so light, almost fragile, but her thighs twining around him like tendrils drag him closer with surprising strength.

„Come on.“ She whispers into his ear and her moans are hot against its shell when he rubs his cock over her clit. His lips curl against her throat, half smile, half snarl as slowy, and ever so slowly he slips into her, her tightness oblivion around him.

All of time has lead to this point, the softness of her voice back then, the smell of freshly mown grass, the tea, sweet and bitter – he can taste it through the years as he kisses her again. A memory of better days and guilty dreams, sqeezed between nightmares and clammy sheets,  is coming to life, shaping him into flesh and purpose. Ancient programming that kicks in. The suns are setting, the shadows lengthen. His finger tighten around her legs, dig into skin as they find their rhythm, rocking into each other.

She bites into his shoulders to muffle her moans and her teeth are sharp like an animal’s, but isn’t this what they are after all? Animals.

Underneath all the musings and layers of civility and rationalisation and social norms they’re apes, selfish creatues that, like lab rats in a test, would forgo food if they had an instant pleasure button to press. Lust and self-destruction are only two sides of the same coin. Somewhere deep down he knows what this means, what they are doing here, but it’s not stopping him, not now.

He’s in a place that isn't real, that envelops his pain with cotton candy. It is warm here and the pleasure ripples over neural pathways and trails down his spine. Her breath is like wind against his neck and in her thighs he feels the first trembling, like leaves in the breeze.

Harder, she says and: More.

Abruptly he lets go of her, setting her to the floor before he spins her around, so she’s bent over the counter.

Like this?, he asks as he thrusts into her again, in a new, straighter angle. He is deeper inside her now and he feels her excitement clenching around him, the muscles contracting in answer to his movements, Maggie’s moans like music in his ears. His thrusts are slow and forceful as he strokes himself against her insides. His arms tight around her, holding her in place, his right hand between Maggie’s legs, drawing circles over her clit. Her moans grow louder, more high-pitched and he can sense the her shivering under his thrusts. Not long now.

He concentrates on the desire twining around his lower spine, winding itself like a clockwork’s spring, a golden spiral of rapture. A ripple on the dark surface of the lake. The moons are strange as the night and the tune of her hair is bitter-sweet. They’re so light now, the floor under their feet falls away and they float, weightless, brains like clouds. Then orgasm hits like gravity, pulling them down with the force of a tidal wave, back into the flesh. Surges of pleasure, sharp, blinding white. It’s so good it’s almost painful. A couple of thrusts, the flutter of her muscles around him, the jerks of release, then the tension is gone.

They lean into each other, gasping for air. Stunned. Staring without seeing, waiting for the frenzy to seep away.

Mere moments pass until Maggie pushes his hand away and leans down to pull up the thong from around her ankles.

Rust stumbles backwards as realisation strikes. He’s known it all along of course and chose not to see it, but now he cannot ignore it anymore.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he asks when finally he has gathered himself, as if he could travel back in time, to the moment when he could still have stopped this. As if he could undo it by simply pretending it has not happened yet. As if he never wanted it in the first place.

“I’m sorry.” Maggie says. “You know. It wasn’t you.”

He only vaguely registers her explanations, apologies through the thought throbbing in his head, flashing like neon signs _She only used you.  
_ He does not know what he has wished this to be. A moment out of time maybe. Some minutes of stolen comfort that never really existed. Like a dream from which you’d wake, happily, that would stick like a post-it to the back of your mind until the glue wears off and – unnoticed – it falls down and disappears in a pile of old paper.

Instead, she’s used him to break up with Marty, to get back at him, even out a score. He’s been turned into a weapon to cut the bonds of marriage and stab someone in the heart. That’s all it is. She did not even care what this means for him.  
He remembers a notion, from seven years back. The impression of living in someone’s fading memory. Now it’s done – he is staring at emptiness.

Anger wells up in him, swelling in his chest into red-hot rage and desperation, a black hole of grief gaping open to swallow him: the loss of home and of purpose and a faint, secret hope, more of a dream maybe. The wish that things would be different.   
“GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!” he yells.

He slams the door shut like closing a book and Rust knows this chapter of his life to be finished, once and for all.

His glassy eyes flicker over the files scattered on his table, piling up like bodies they stand for, stacks and stacks of them, spiraling out from a tree outside Erath: women, children, a circle that never ends. With shaking hands he grabs for the cigarette pack.

The smoke is calming in his lungs and just like the tobacco the rage begins to dissolve…   
As he gazes after the billows that whaft and twirl, an unexpected sense of serenity overcomes him. He will have to salvage his case files from the station, he thinks. Maybe rent a storage locker for his stuff. And then he can leave all of this behind for while, follow another lead.

He picks up an envelope from the table,  that’s been sitting there for a good while, nestled among the case files. He takes out the letter and unfolds it. It wears his pop’s untidy scrawl, ball pen smeared over yellowed squared paper. Only a few lines. A date, a couple of years back, an address in South Dakota and the sentence: „If you ever feel like you have to know…“


End file.
